MBAs Guide to Windows XP Professional

Rating:
Summary: A Great Guide to XP
Review: As a business user in publishing who's just upgraded to Windows XP I found this book excellent. It's mercifully free of jargon and provides a comprehensive guide how to get maximum use out of XP. XP is fast - but it's significantly different in appearance to previous versions of Windows. I'd recommend this guide to the general home XP user as well. It supplies all the basic info you'd expect - creating folders and files, printing, internet use, shortcuts, using the explorer bars - as well as some you might not (eg. how to customize XP for a user with a disability). For the business traveller there's a helpful section on how to use XP on a laptop, including tips on how to specify new dialing rules, use a calling card and encrypt folders.

As someone who in the past has struggled even with one of the Dummies guides I found this book very straightforward as it cuts its way through the jungle of faxing, blocking or routing messages, security settings and conferencing with Net Meeting. Not to mention how to set up a distribution list or a Newsgroup account.

The section on Administrative Tools Demystified is very useful. As the authors point out, data has an inherent tendency to fragment and no user, no matter how expert, can avoid this problem. The advice on checking for disk errors and defragmenting files is lucid and to the point. With this guide every XP user should be able to optimize their system for peak performance.

The book has a pretty neutral tone (unlike the sometimes irritatingly folksy tone of the Dummies series), though a dry wit sometimes surfaces. The section on what the authors' call XP's plumbing aims to supply "all the information you need to appear very knowledgeable the next time that bad-tempered tech-support guy barks his questions at you".

A final section is devoted specifically to business projects. Topics include setting up a small network, working with a client/server network and last but not least troubleshooting system problems and errors (including guidelines for setting up a diaster recovery plan). A useful glossary defines terms like "Ethernet address" and explains enigmatic acronyms (IAB, IANA, ICANN, ICS, IETF etc).

For business users this is definitely the authoritative guide to XP Professional but XP Home users should find it useful too since it also covers features like Media Player and Movie Maker, printing photos, protection from viruses, working with floppy disks, and all those other things which the home PC user is likely to use.